The present disclosure relates to a chip electronic component and a board for the mounting thereof.
An inductor, a chip electronic component, can be a representative passive element configuring an electronic circuit and can be used together with a resistor and a capacitor for example to remove noise. Such an inductor can be combined with such a capacitor using electromagnetic property to configure a circuit such as a resonance circuit, a filter circuit, or the like, and can be used, for example, for amplifying a signal in a specific frequency band.
Recently, as the miniaturization and thinning of various information technology (IT) devices, such as communications devices, display devices, or the like, have accelerated, research into technology related to the miniaturizing and thinning of various elements such as inductors, capacitors, transistors, and the like, included in such IT devices has been continuously conducted. Therefore, inductors have rapidly been replaced in some applications by small, high density chips capable of being automatically surface-mounted, and thin film type inductor such as where mixtures of a magnetic powder and a resin can be formed as coil patterns formed on upper and lower surfaces of a thin film insulating substrate by plating have been developed.
Thin film type inductors can be manufactured by forming coil patterns on an insulating substrate and filling an outer portion with a magnetic material.
Various techniques of plating can be important in order to improve direct current (DC) resistance (Rdc) among important characteristics of the inductor. In some cases, an anisotropic plating method in which plating is performed by applying a high density current to only or to preferentially or to primarily grow plating in a direction, such as an upward direction of a coil can be used.
In some embodiments, in a substrate plating process of forming a coil of an inductor, an insulating material such as a solder resist (SR), a dry film resist (DFR), or the like, can be applied to a specific portion of the coil for example to allow secondary lead wire plating, after a primary pattern plating process.
However, generally, when a secondary lead wire plating process is used after a primary pattern plating process, internal pattern plating layers, except for the outermost pattern plating layer and the innermost pattern plating layer, have plating widths and thicknesses that are substantially similar to each other due to the presence of plating layers adjacent thereto in both directions.
However, the outermost pattern plating layer and the innermost pattern plating layer, each of which do not have plating layers adjacent thereto in one direction, can have excessive plating formed in one direction in a secondary lead wire plating process. As a result, the outermost coil conductor pattern and the innermost coil conductor pattern generally have a plating width larger than those of internal coil conductor patterns.
Alternatively, coil conductor patterns configuring an inductor a coil structure having improved inductor characteristics, can have coil conductor loops/sections gradually reduced in thickness/width, vertically, horizontally or some combination of vertical and horizontal, from the outermost coil conductor loop/section toward the innermost coil conductor loop/section, for example, from an outer portion of a magnetic material body toward an inner portion thereof. In some embodiments, the gradual reduction in thickness/width can occur over all of the loops/sections and in some embodiments, the gradual reduction in thickness/width can be interrupted with coils of a different thickness/width, such as a larger thickness/width or can occur over only a subset of the loop/sections. In some embodiments, an inner coil loop/section can have a thickness/width the same as other or all inner loops/sections or the same as the outermost or innermost loop/section. In some embodiments, only the innermost loop/section. In some embodiments where there is more than one coil conductor pattern, the coil conductor patterns can be substantially the same as one another or different from one another.
However, coil structures made previously by substrate plating processes have not included the above-described improved coil structure features. As a result, previous coil patterns have limitations in the characteristics of inductors made by substrate plating processes.